THE SNP’s independence strategy for the 2024 General Election did not have “any real credibility” with the Yes movement, the party’s deputy Westminster leader has said.
Speaking to The Scotsman, SNP MP Pete Wishart – who was elected to represent Perth and Kinross-shire in July, marking his sixth consecutive election victory – suggested that his party had been rushed into platforming a policy that “ended up looking slightly absurd”.
Ahead of the General Election, the SNP went through a series of policy shifts on independence as its leadership changed.
Under Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP said it would fight the Westminster vote as a “de facto” referendum.
Under Humza Yousaf, this then changed so that a majority of seats would be taken as a mandate to open independence negotiations with the UK government.
After John Swinney then took office, just months before the General Election, the party seemed to pivot again to instead make the vote about “pressure” for a second referendum.
The First Minister said two weeks before polls opened: “In this election if people want to intensify the pressure for a referendum on independence then their opportunity is to vote for the SNP to make that happen.”
Wishart told The Scotsman that “the policy that we crafted was an amalgam of all sorts of different things and it ended up looking slightly absurd and I don’t think it had any real credibility with independence supporters”.
“This time around, we’ve got to get it absolutely right,” he added.
“Bring everybody who is involved in the movement together in a safe space forum, where ideas can be presented and looked at and, more importantly, it would give us an opportunity to engage positively with civil Scotland, to try and enlist the trade unions.
“I look at the model of what the Labour and LibDems set up in the Constitution Convention in the 1990s and I think that was a fantastic model and how we [should] approach it. If it means taking a bit of time to look at getting our independence policy absolutely correct, I think that’s alright.”
Wishart further said that, when researching his book on the 2014 independence referendum and campaign, he had seen that the “most powerful lesson of 2014 is just how we were collegiate, how we worked together, and the range of groups that were actually behind independence”.
He went on: “For Scotland, the unity message is really quite important. I think people look back to 2014 and like to think that we'd be able to certainly create that type of organisation once again, one that has such reach into every part of Scotland. We’re all in it together.
“When you look at the Yes movement right now, it’s a bit fractious, it’s a little bit argumentative, it’s uncertain of itself. In 2014, there was no doubt at all that this was a movement and on the march, and we came so close to achieving it.”
